Nuclear power’s time has come!
For decades, pioneering environmentalist Stewart Brand, the founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, opposed the use of nuclear power. Now he sees it as vital to efforts to combat climate change.
Earlier this month, Brand made the case for nuclear power in a debate with Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California. (TED is a nonprofit that stands for technology, information and design and is dedicated to “Ideas worth spreading.”)
His outspoken support for nuclear power comes as the White House has been pushing for the first new nuclear plants in the United States in three decades…
Brand says his turnabout began in 2002, when the Global Business Network, a consulting organization he co-founded, did a project on climate change for the U.S. Secretary of Defense. In an interview with CNN.com, Brand said the project showed him that the globe’s climate can change abruptly: “It goes over some tipping point and suddenly you’re in a situation that you don’t like and you can’t go back. That got me way more concerned about climate as a clear and present danger than I had been.”
Looking for a surefire way to cut greenhouse gases, Brand said the alternative to burning coal became clear: “We already had a very good supplier of …electricity. It worked like mad and was as clean as it could be — and that was nuclear.
“Looking at nuclear more closely made me look at coal more closely and I got to realizing what a horror it was across the board, and as I learned more about nuclear, I started learning all this stuff that my fellow environmentalists had been careful not to let me know about.”
Brand spoke to CNN.com Wednesday. Halfway down the page is the edited transcript.
Working days while studying engineering at night school, I was a technician in an R&D lab for a key vendor to builders of nuclear power plants starting back in the 1950′s.
I never had a problem with the science or safety solutions we were capable of within the nuclear power industry. Cripes, I still get checked-on every decade or so because the building I worked in had been the pilot plant for cladding uranium power rods. Never a peep after more than a half-century.
What turned me from support for the industry was the overwhelming corruption of cost-plus budgeting from Uncle Sugar. Guaranteed padding the cost of construction, manufacture, production – with diminished concern for quality control or modernizing design. It was a cash cow, a welfare plan for companies like Westinghouse.
But, knowledge and science advance even if politicians don’t. Other countries like France continued with new generations of design and fiscal oversight, kept the wheel turning. I’m pleased to see Stewart Brand never stopped learning.
Nuclear is not a clean energy supply. The fuel and finished waste are extremely toxic and hazardous.
Having said that, proper handling can, and does, diminish the probability of injury. The major problem is the spent fuel. That is much less an engineering problem than a political problem.
Until we can get a suitable storage site we are only asking for trouble. And Yucca Mountain was not suitable.
Mr. Fusion
February 23, 2010 at 7:17 am
Let’s fire all the nuclear waste up into space and maybe discourage all those aliens from spying on us all the time.
Hey! Maybe they know how to make it benign or even turn it into something useful? Beings who know how to go faster than the speed of light probably know lots of useful things.
Cinaedh
February 23, 2010 at 7:32 am
I like the way you think.
I have long believed the best disposal site would be in far northern Canada. There are several abandoned mines in the very geographically stabilized Canadian Shield. The remoteness of the areas can only aid the security. If some use can be found in the future, the waste would still be recoverable.
Mr. Fusion
February 23, 2010 at 7:51 am
Sorry, Mr. Fusion. There may be a hitch in your plan.
More than ten years ago, I think, Toronto decided they were going to truck all their garbage up to Timmins and dump it into a gigantic, abandoned, open pit mine.
There would have been a pretty well endless stream of trucks, driving back and forth.
The people who live up here blocked the Trans-Canada Highway and the railroad tracks, essentially cutting the entire country in half and said, “Fuck you! This is pristine wilderness and you’re not going smell it up and pollute it. Look after your own damned garbage!”
The garbage is now being trucked to the pristine wilderness in the United States.
Sometimes, living next to a country where they all think “Greed is Good” – is very useful. If you pay them enough, they’ll do anything, sort of like a desperate crack whore.
Cinaedh
February 23, 2010 at 8:19 am
Where will you get the power to play your material games from, swearing is wasted energy which also pollutes the atmosphere………..
zorki
February 23, 2010 at 10:57 am
“…swearing is wasted energy…”
Agreed but I distinctly remember saying “Fuck you!” at the time and I was just attempting to be as accurate as possible in my reporting of the incident.
Cinaedh
February 23, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Once again Sinnered, evil to those who evil think, in whatever one believes in or does not….try to be happy……..
zorki
February 24, 2010 at 1:01 am
Yes, I lived in Toronto and agreed the plan was bad.
I’m not suggesting an open pit mine a few miles from down town Timmins. An abandoned deep rock mine miles from any large town. The amount deposited would be minuscule compared to Toronto’s garbage, wouldn’t smell, and be enclosed in inert, stable containers.
Mr. Fusion
February 23, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Once again great minds thinking alike, this is very inspiring to those who want to listen and learn. sadly many of don’t……..
zorki
February 23, 2010 at 11:05 am
It’s simpler than that.
Aside from building reactors which don’t produce the sort of waste our backwards designs do, the French recycle 95% of “waste” into new fuel rods.
moss
February 23, 2010 at 7:52 am
A lot to consider…
Facts and truths, I am sure, will prevail.
E Trams
February 26, 2010 at 2:50 am